After Election loss in Wisconsin, GOP targets Ryan's challenger, "coastal liberal" Randy Bryce with Comedic Exaggerations.

Feeling the heat and possible loss in the upcoming election, Paul Ryan and his backers demonstrated just how desperate and imaginative they can be, releasing a flood of Onion sounding quotes that's guaranteed to make you smile.

Ryan is so dedicated, he's still hasn't decided to run again, so what's the worry?

Randy Bryce, Blogger, Tweaks Twitter Follower Numbers: I never heard of this particular service, Devumi, but unless you're against private businesses offering marketing services, how can you blame someone for trying...?

"Back in 2015, Randy spent about $10-$20 to buy 1,000 to 1,500 followers," said Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Bryce campaign. "He was trying out blogging at the time … (not during his) campaign, and he's gained over 200,000 followers on Twitter since we launched in July."

The number to remember is "200,000" followers since July of 2017, with no help from Devumi.

The National Republican Congressional Committee and Ryan's campaign oddly decided to pile on a private business and Bryce's marketing campaign to promote his blog. Hey, either you like business or you don't, which is it you hypocritical whiners?

Here's the funny part. This is basically all the New York Times wrote about Byrce: 

Devumi’s customers include both avid supporters and fervent critics of President Trump, and both liberal cable pundits and a reporter at the alt-right bastion Breitbart. Randy Bryce, an ironworker seeking to unseat Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, purchased Devumi followers in 2015, when he was a blogger and labor activist. Louise Linton, the wife of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, bought followers when she was trying to gain traction as an actress.

From that brief mention, the NRC and Ryan's campaign saw so much more than I ever could. Besides making it seem like Bryce is supposed lying about Paul Ryan's less than secret agenda, Bryce apparently has a "Hollywood base? Will he be in the new Avengers movie too?:

The National Republican Congressional Committee: "We all know Randy Bryce spends a lot of time on Twitter lobbing false attacks at Paul Ryan and pandering to his Hollywood base," said Chris Martin, regional press secretary for the committee. "But according to today's bombshell story from the New York Times, Bryce's online presence is just as phony as his astroturf campaign."

Wow, his "astroturf campaign?" So the added 199,000-200,000 twitter followers are phony? Who knew?

But the following hyperbolic lunacy should not be forgotten by angry voters tired of Ryan's typically false accusations:

Jeremy Adler, communications director for Ryan's campaign: "Up till this point, the energy behind Randy Bryce's campaign was almost exclusively from coastal liberals. But a revelation in this morning's New York Times' bombshell story exposes just how artificial support for him really is."

I guess that's what they would call there best shot?

I hope they truly feel that way. It would serve them right. Oh, and Trump fire-breathers should take note about their favorite fake news source...appealing to those coastal liberals?:

Aaron Klein, a radio talk show host and the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News, bought at least 35,000 followers from Devumi, according to records. A Times analysis found that the majority of his followers were bots, as demonstrated by the unusual patterns seen here.

Universal Basic Income: Good idea or Bad?

Okay, I promise to ease up on the idea of a basic income after this post. At least until the next relevant discussion is researched and reported on.

NPR has been covering this fascinating topic for a long time, and I almost missed it covering the backward movement Scott Walker and the Republicans have been pushing for the last 7 years. Let's face it, their bizarre "every day is opposite day" supposed "forward" agenda is an amazing distraction that even got to me.

Whether you're for or against the idea of a "universal basic income" (UBI), the following podcasts will dissect every question you might have right now. From their archives...:

The basic income is a hot topic of social policy. It's a steady payout to citizens. Liberals argue it provides support to struggling citizens with dignity and freedom. Libertarians like that it can be dispensed without an expensive, and controlling, bureaucracy. The rest argue that it's a giveaway that will inspire laziness. 

In Finland, unemployment is 8.8 percent, and most of the time, citizens can't collect unemployment if they're making additional money, discouraging recipients from finding jobs. So the Finnish government has set up something unusual: a live experiment. A test to help settle the debate, or figure if it's even worth having. A test group of 2,000 unemployed Finns receive 560 euros each month from the government. No strings attached. For unemployed researcher Sanna Leskinen, that meant being able to apply for part time jobs and plan for the future. Avery Trufelman went to Finland to see how the experiment was working ... how does the basic income work in practice? And could it work in the U.S.?

Here's another perspective, answering even more questions...(click  on the image for the TED video presentation):

Historian Rutger Bregman says a lack of cash is the cause, not the symptom, of poverty. He proposes a simple but radical solution: give those in need a guaranteed basic income. Bregman's most recent book, Utopia for Realists, explores universal basic income and other provocative ideas. Bregman also writes for The Correspondent and has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, and on the BBC.

If you have the time, the report below is a great overview as well:

Much of the anger and anxiety in the 2016 election is fueled by the sense that economic opportunity is slipping away for many Americans. Misha Chellam is a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco and is part of the burgeoning basic income movement … "I have this gut sense from having been in the Valley for a while now that there will be a coming wave of automation that's going to get rid of a lot of jobs." While technological advances make some jobs obsolete, the past has shown that tech has also created new opportunities.

Then there's Uber, which is experimenting with driverless taxis and trucks. "And that would affect 3.5 million truck drivers, another 5 million people who support the truck-driving industry," Chellam says. "And that's just one example of automation."

Chellam says software is eating white-collar jobs, too, and everyone from bookkeepers to doctors and lawyers will be affected. Chellam criticizes politicians for not talking about this automated future. At best, he says, they talk about "retraining," which doesn't address the scope of the problem.

Chellam believes as technology replaces more workers, the traditional 40-hour-a-week job could become a thing of the past. If that happens, how will families get health insurance or save for retirement?

Some experts say the only answer is a government-guaranteed paycheck that would allow people to buy food and housing. That would not only help the individuals but would help keep economic wheels spinning and generate tax revenues.

Natalie Foster, a fellow at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research organization in Palo Alto said some technologists suggest setting the basic income at $10,000 a year. Others have proposed raising carbon emission taxes to pay for it. They're hosting panels asking what would it mean to give people money they didn't work for. In Oakland, they're about to find out. Y Combinator is funding a research project on basic income, where it will pay 100 people enough money for food and shelter — no strings attached. The prestigious tech accelerator helped launch companies that include Airbnb and Reddit.

Y Combinator in a blog post by its president, Sam Altman, predicted that "at some point in the future," some version of basic income will be rolled out nationally.

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who is active in the basic income movement says that whether you like the idea or not, there won't be an alternative because decent-paying jobs are disappearing for millions of people. "The reality is that work has changed. Forty percent of jobs are now contingent, meaning they're part-time, independent contractors, Uber drivers," he says. And he says that shift has already left middle-class Americans economically insecure. A recent study by the Federal Reserve found that 46 percent of Americans surveyed didn't have enough cash to cover a $400 emergency expense. "I think there is a sense that our economy is broken in many ways," Hughes says. "But rather than try to restructure our economy so it looks like the 1950s, I think we have to be honest with ourselves." Hughes says that means basic income isn't an idea for the distant future but one we need to consider today.

Sadly, the first vote for a basic income in Switzerland failed. Yet maybe a whole country shouldn't try something until a few smaller attempts were made with tweaks and improvements:

Swiss voters over the weekend dealt a stern backslap to a ballot proposal that would have guaranteed a basic monthly income for all 8.1 million residents — regardless of their employment status — of that wealthy European nation.

The vote wasn't even close. Almost 77 percent of voters rejected the proposal that the government give every adult in Switzerland about $2,500 every month. (Children would have received a smaller subsidy of $650.)

Supporters had argued that the bold social experiment would help eradicate poverty and protect workers in an increasingly automated economy. Opponents said the measure, with an estimated price tag of more than $200 billion a year, was too costly and would lead to public spending cuts.Switzerland was the first country to offer its voters their choice on the idea of a government-guaranteed monthly income, USA Today reports. The newspaper says the proposal is being debated in other countries, including the Netherlands, Finland, Canada and New Zealand.

Trump's simple immigration plan...

US Job Growth of Contractors and Freelancers eliminates Job Security, Benefits, Protections!!! Basic Income needs serious discussion.

Having been a sole proprietor and independent contractor for the last 15 years, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the nation is also moving in that direction. While "old economy" Republicans like Scott Walker salivate over filling big manufacturering plants with warm bodies, the 21st century jobs on online and populated with independent contractors and freelancers is picking up steam.

The fact that the new economy isn't even on the Republicans radar yet is scary. We need to plan now, not ten to twenty years from now. The NPR story fits perfectly with the rising talk of a "basic income" for every American. You'll see why below:

A new NPR/Marist poll finds that 1 in 5 jobs in America is held by a worker under contract. Within a decade, contractors and freelancers could make up half of the American workforce. Workers across all industries and at all professional levels will be touched by the movement toward independent work — one without the constraints, or benefits, of full-time employment. Policymakers are just starting to talk about the implications.

Machines are siphoning off basic tasks, and temporary workers allow flexibility to size up and down. In the legal field, there are online platforms that match freelance lawyers with clients. 

It's not just business driving the trend. Surveys show a large majority of freelancers are free agents by choice. The NPR/Marist poll shows that 34 percent of part-time workers are looking for full-time work. That may be increasingly difficult. Currently, 1 in 5 workers is a contract worker. According to economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz, almost all — or 94 percent — of net jobs created from 2005 to 2015 were these sorts of impermanent jobs.

Within a decade, many labor economists believe freelancers will outnumber full timers.

Arun Sundararajan, a management professor at New York University and author of The Sharing Economy, says "this is the work arrangement for the future." The new normal will be freelance work. "Twenty years from now, I don't think a typical college graduate is going to expect that full-time employment is their path to building a career," Sundararajan says.

20 years from now we'll still be doling out taxpayer money to Foxconn, at time we may need to spend money on never dreamed of education and social structures:

Sundararajan says that will ultimately lead to many other changes, from education to social structures and public services. Those looser ties will shift more responsibility to contract workers. They must handle saving for retirement and their health insurance on their own.

"But some people, despite their best efforts, just aren't going to be successful in doing that," Wheeling's mayor, Glenn Elliott says. "What's going to happen to those who fall through the cracks?  Because the 1950s model of retirement and getting your pension check every year from your company is not a realistic model for a lot of people, increasingly."

The public safety net — the budgets for fire departments and social services — is already strained, he says, by the area's opioid problems, among other things. A future where fewer workers have benefits won't help.

Basic Income may be our Future Safety Net, and Job Creator: I cut and pasted the important points and argument for a basic income, which again is still a pretty undeveloped idea that has worked well in a few early experiments:

Since 1980, average income for the top .01 percent of Americans has more than tripled. For the bottom 90 percent, it’s basically flat-lined. Facebook's Chris Hughes is among those who view the disparity as a national crisis. And so he recently launched the Economic Security Project, a two-year effort to invest $10 million from Hughes and others into research on universal basic income. This investment comes amid a sudden wave of interest in universal basic income in the tech industry. 

Y Combinator, the Palo Alto–based startup accelerator, announced in early 2016 that it was starting its own basic income experiment in which a small number of Oakland residents would receive a cash payment and be compared to a control group. Tesla’s Elon Musk, meanwhile, has warned about the rise of the robots, arguing at the World Government Summit earlier this year that a basic income is “going to be necessary.” And when Mark Zuckerberg delivered his commencement speech at Harvard in May, he advocated for a basic income, saying it would provide people with “a cushion to try new ideas."

Hughes was looking for basic income studies that the Economic Security Project might like to finance. The goal of the organization is to provide the money so that researchers can investigate the impact of a basic income on people’s lives. His group has contributed $1 million to Stockton, California’s basic income experiment, as well as to GiveDirectly, a Google-backed charity that is studying the impact of unconditional cash transfers in Kenya, and other projects.

The Economic Security Project team also recently conducted its own survey of more than 1,000 Alaskans who receive roughly $2,000 per person, per year, through the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is drawn from oil revenues. It found that when faced with a choice between lowering taxes or keeping their cash payments, 71 percent of Alaskans say they want to keep the payments. “It feels like security,” Hughes says, “and in an economy that zigs and zags and has more part-time jobs, security is hard to come by.”

Hughes is no basic income purist. He believes, for instance, that for this economic moonshot to be politically palatable, it would have to be tied to work. “Work is a key source of purpose in our lives.” But the changing nature of work, particularly among top tech employers, is still a critical problem for the American workforce. One illuminating New York Times article illustrated how the men and women who scrub toilets and do other low-skilled work for companies like Apple are hired from contracting companies which set the terms of their employment. Those workers are cut off from the benefits and upward mobility that the company’s engineers and marketers enjoy. Because the workers are contractors, the big tech companies feel no pressure to raise their wages, and aren’t responsible for offering health-care coverage. 

In a new economy that mints billionaires overnight, giving millions of dollars away for experimentation is the easy part. It’s taxpayers, after all, not individual tech companies, who would have to pay for a basic income should one ever come to pass.

A legislated basic income is in the realm of fantasy at the moment. Even among its proponents there is almost no agreement about the fundamentals, starting with how much money would be an optimal basic income. 

Ioana Marinescu, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, who researches basic income, says that research on the Alaska fund is enlightening, but not dispositive. “We know $2,000 a year makes a real difference to many people,” Marinescu says. “But would something lower still make a difference? We don’t know.”

Others argue that the problem with a universal basic income is the “universal” part. In a world in which every American gets a check, some of that money would necessarily be squandered on rich people. Some libertarian groups like the Cato Institute support the idea, seeing it as a way to replace the country’s existing social safety net programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, an idea liberals deplore.

Even in a fever dream scenario in which a basic income could pass in Congress, there is so far little evidence that it would help the “forgotten men and women” whom Trump described in his campaign. After all, $2,000 a year hardly feels like an adequate substitute for a disappeared $50,000 union job at the local steel mill.

Still, if anything is to be learned from the experiment, it’s this: To imagine that a basic income, or something like it, would suddenly satisfy the disillusioned, out-of-work Rust Belt worker is as wrongheaded as imagining it would do no good at all, or drive people to stop working. There is a third possibility: that an infusion of cash into struggling households would lift up the youth in those households in all the subtle but still meaningful ways Costello has observed over the years, until finally, when they come of age, they are better prepared for the brave new world of work, whether the robots are coming or not.

Burger King's Net Neutality Pricing System, ATT wants Law Back, and Local Community's targeted by Big Telecom.

Today net neutrality came into focus, thanks to Burger King? Beautiful.

Hitting the Twitter fan in a big way was this Burger King ad explaining net neutrality to its customers in the most obnoxious way. And yes, I will be buying a "slow MPBS" Burger King order:

Burger King's new ad has become a sensation, with more than a million views on YouTube and it's lighting up Twitter. In the ad customers, whom the restaurant says are real, are told they will be charged different prices for a Whopper, based on speed, or MBPS (making burgers per second). Prices range from $5 to $26. And the customers grow increasingly furious in an art-imitating-life display that mocks new internet rules that have led to wide-scale protests, even death threats.

ATT now backs Net Neutrality: This is a twist...but are they serious?

ATT is calling on Congress for a national net neutrality law that would govern Internet providers and tech companies alike, which the telecom giant says would end a fractious, years-long debate over the future of the Web. In a series of full-page ads Wednesday in major newspapers such as The Washington Post and the New York Times, AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson proposed an “Internet Bill of Rights” that could help guarantee an open Internet, one in which online content is not blocked or slowed down by telecom or cable companies, nor by Internet companies such as Google or Facebook.

AT T's legislative campaign aims to head off what many analysts say could be another swing of the regulatory pendulum against broadband providers. Many states are also moving to pass their own net neutrality rules to replace the federal regulations. On Wednesday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) signed an executive order requiring that state agencies purchase Internet access only from broadband providers that abide by net neutrality.

The prospect of having to comply with perhaps dozens of state-level net neutrality rules is a nightmare for Internet providers. Although the FCC has said it will take states to court if they seek to circumvent its decision, companies such as AT&T want a guarantee of stability. AT&T's call for the bill to apply equally to Internet companies and providers reflects a turning point for the long-running net neutrality saga as well as for Silicon Valley's fortunes in Washington.

One tech industry official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely. “This is like the big, bad wolf promising better building codes after blowing down all the houses in town,” the official said.

Big Telecom taking Over Broadband Control: Ajit Pai's plan is to turn the internet over to the big players, leaving local government and consumers to Big Telecoms monopolized market prices:

San Jose mayor Mayor Sam Liccardo says he’s quitting FCC broadband committee because Big Telecom is running it: the FCC, under Trump-appointed chairman Ajit Pai, launched an advisory committee on high-speed internet access, saying it planned to bring broadband to more people. 

At a recent meeting, Mayor Liccardo said, a working group with no municipal representatives considered a plan to eliminate municipal control of broadband infrastructure. The goal, he now believes, is to give the industry “publicly-funded infrastructure at taxpayer-subsidized rates.” 

In August, the Center for Public Integrity explained how local governments believed they were being played, as the FCC reportedly stacked more than three out of four positions on the panel with business-friendly interests. 

National Forest Campground closed because nearby property Owner Target practice.

Well, what do you know, guns and freedom just got in the way of business. Guns win...for awhile?

UPDATE: 1/28/2018: What do you know, the guy with guns may be mentally unstable? Freedom folks:

The man whose behavior officials blame for the closure of the Boulder Lake Campground has been ordered to go to a mental health facility for at least six months of treatment. Earlier this month, the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest canceled all reservations for the summer and closed the campground, citing safety concerns. The Oconto County Sheriff’s Department said it agreed with the shutdown decision based on deputies' encounters last year with the property owner … As part of the mental health commitment ruling, Judge Conley suspended the man’s right to possess firearms. The man could petition to have those rights restored, Pawlak said.

Businesses in the area say they are hopeful campers will be able to return. “I'm sure everybody is going to be greatly relieved because Boulder Lake campground is the money maker in the Nicolet campground system,” said Beth Boyd of Grudgeville Pub and Grub

This was first reported:

AP: Sheriff's officials say a popular campground in a northern Wisconsin forest will close this season due to safety concerns related to a neighboring property owner. WLUK-TV reports that officials decided to close the Boulder Lake Campground in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest because a nearby property owner was holding target practice on his land.

Oconto County Sheriff's Departmet Chief Deputy Ed Janke says that while that action is legal, it is concerning ... came to the decision to close the campground. About 85 people who have already reserved campsites will get refunds.

Town of Doty chairman, Dick Kendall, says the closure is disruptive to the thousands of visitors who use the campground, as well as the stores and restaurants they patronize.

Then things change, kinda?

A safety concern that led to the shutdown of a popular campground in Oconto County is now stable, deputies say.

According to Chief Deputy Ed Janke, the matter has been resolved through court proceedings and they no longer believe there are significant public safety concerns. Officials did not say how the threat was stabilized.

Climate Change, and Walker's Reckless Denial.

I've got to hand it to WKOW-TV, they weren't shy about their position on climate change. This is one of the best programs I've seen on the subject, and from a Wisconsin perspective. The 55-minute long YouTube piece, Our Wisconsin: The Climate Change Effect, broken up here in sections, presents the growing body of evidence that something needs to be done soon. What's wrong with playing it safe, since we're moving in the green direction anyway?

Here's a short summary of Scott Walker's impact on what was a beautiful state. If you can, check out the entire article in the Journal Sentinel here:

JS: Among states, Wisconsin has been one of the most active in recent years in pulling back from existing environmental protections and programs, said Barry Rabe, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.

In 2010, shortly before taking office, Walker said legislation that would limit the authority of agencies … one instance, they used the state budget bill to quietly change state law in 2015 to ease the way for Enbridge Inc. to gain state authority to condemn private property and avoid added insurance requirements … came after a massive spill in 2010 Enbridge paid $61 million in civil penalties. In Wisconsin, the company paid $1.1 million for running afoul of state environmental laws.

In another case in 2014, lawmakers voted to delay for up to 20 years the full rollout of Doyle-era regulations to limit how much phosphorus could be released into waterways. In recent years, phosphorus has been blamed for large, summer "dead zones" in Green Bay — areas with so little dissolved oxygen that fish can't survive.

An analysis finished in 2012 estimated $18.8 million in net benefits from the planned phosphorus reductions over a 20-year period. But in 2015, state officials commissioned a new study that estimated the reverse — that the new regulations would cost nearly $7 billion. That was used as justification to delay them.

Held steady a requirement that 10% of electricity come from renewable sources … while neighboring states are moving ahead with plans to use a larger share of wind and solar power.

Supporters of efforts to curtail environmental regulations point to the blockbuster deal with Foxconn as a validation of tax and regulatory policies that are more welcoming … for a complex that will include a manufacturing process involving chemicals and heavy metals.

Walker is viewed as the most environmentally indifferent governor since the 1970s, if not long before.

In October 2016, the DNR was sued after the agency said it would no longer consider the potential harm from high-capacity wells to nearby lakes, streams and wetlands when reviewing an application for a new well. Last month, a judge in Dane County ruled against the DNR. 

Passage of legislation in November that strikes down a nearly 20-year moratorium on metallic mining. "When did radical environmentalists become more important to some in the Wisconsin political elite than blue collar workers?" tweeted Eric Bott on Nov. 2. 

Political scientist Katherine J. Cramer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said she saw this firsthand the attitudes of rural voters in the Walker era. Whether it's accurate or not, "I hear a lot of critiques of the DNR," she said. "Some people feel like these regulations are being imposed by a government that is clueless about them and their lives.”

WMC supported the state's legal challenges of regulations by the Obama administration to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In 2016, Walker ordered agencies not to prepare for the new climate rules; and in December of that year, it was discovered the DNR had scrubbed information from its website that said the Earth is growing warmer and human activities are the main reason. Officials replaced it with wording saying the subject is a matter of scientific debate. 

A month earlier, during an interview, Cathy Stepp, then-head of the agency, said she believed the DNR would play a role in adapting strategies to a changing climate on matters such as flood control and the health of forests. What about the role humans play in global warming? “That’s above our pay grade here,” Stepp said. 

Cathy Stepp, described the DNR to the audience in Florida as having an “us-against-them mentality,” and that it was her goal to turn her agency from a “prohibiting agency to a permitting agency, which is frankly what I thought we were supposed to be. Some people are not going to like this, but I don’t believe that this agency has been managed by using private-sector business manager philosophies before," Stepp said in a 2016 interview on a department-wide reorganization.

Under Stepp, the number of cases the DNR referred for prosecution over pollution dropped by more than one half, compared with Doyle.

In February, officials blamed workload demands of the agency as a reason to end the publication of the self-supporting Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine … lawmakers restored some of the funding.

In June, the DNR announced it would no longer manage a 2-acre site at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis, where staff ranging from game wardens to biologists have mingled with fairgoers since 1948. 

The taxpayer incentives for Foxconn represent the largest subsidy to a foreign company in U.S. history.  It parallels how Walker and Republicans responded after a Florida company proposed in 2010 to develop a $1.5 billion iron ore mine in Ashland and Iron counties. Gogebic Taconite demanded lawmakers rewrite laws regulating iron mining … The bill sparked the biggest environmental debate in a decade. It failed by one vote in the Senate in 2012, chiefly over worries of the mine’s impact on water resources. One year later it passed.

What was not known until 2014 was that Gogebic had secretly donated $700,000 in 2011 and 2012 to help Republicans survive recall elections and have enough votes to pass the mining bill. Gogebic pulled out of the project in 2015, citing worries that the EPA under the Obama administration would veto the project because of potential harm to water resources. The EPA denied it would use its power in such a fashion. At the time, President Bill Williams said relations with state regulators had been good. “But there is probably still a subculture at the DNR, for lack of a better word, that is green,” he said. 

Scott Walker no friend of Rural Conservative Voters, unless he wants to get reelected.

Rural conservative voters see something in Scott Walker and his band of plundering Republican pirates I can't. Whether it's a simple (R) next to the name or one issue voting, things in rural Wisconsin aren't getting better, and they may be getting worse.

Farm Bankruptcies most in Nation: This just hit the news today. It seems Walker was oblivious to the harsh reality of his own voters:

New federal court data shows the Western District of Wisconsin had the highest number of farm bankruptcies in the country last year. The Western District had 28 Chapter 12 bankruptcy cases filed in 2017, a chapter specifically for family farmers or fishermen. The district includes 44 counties and covers more than half of the geographic area of the state.

Walker went after Rural Farmers Estates to Fund Medicaid:

WSJ-Dee J. Hall: The state Department of Health Services has new powers under the state budget to recover money from the estates of people whose loved ones have received Medicaid funding for long-term care … the Legislature’s own nonpartisan legal and financial agencies have warned that the changes … could violate federal law. Critics say the changes could prompt some elderly couples to divorce and make it harder for children to inherit the family farm or business. A couple’s home is exempted … But proceeds from the sale of that home could be taken by the state to repay Medicaid used to pay for a spouse’s nursing home or other long-term care. An elder law attorneys said, “It greatly expands the types of property the state can go after … In the past, the state could not go after the property of the (non-Medicaid receiving) spouse.”

What? Walker Proposes $50M In Rural Economic Development, but...: It seems during this reelection year Walker is doing another 180, after cutting help for rural farmers. I wrote this back in Jan. 2016:

Scott Walker's $3.6 million budget cut to the UW Extension should get rural Republican voters riled up. It continues the Republican assault on their own rural constituents that keeps them frustrated and angry at their own government. The UW Extension "provides farmers with technical assistance, nutrient management and more," but those days are slipping away, thanks to cuts signed by Walker.

UW-Extension, which applies research and expertise across the state in myriad areas, has been forced to restructure ... cut $1.2 million from county-level programs, $1.7 million from campus programs and state specialists and $700,000 from the administration.

Monticello dairy farmer Bryan Voegeli's concern is that farmers who rely on Extension staffers to provide answers for myriad issues won’t receive the one-on-one assistance that has been an Extension trademark for decades. He said the Extension was a tremendous help when he modernized and expanded his picturesque operation ... that now includes more than 200 Brown Swiss milking cows ... a new freestyle barn in 2005 and converted its old barn that is more than 100 years old into a milking parlor. Instead of county offices fully staffed with agriculture, child development, economic development and family living agents, the Extension announced that it plans to open regional offices covering multiple counties.

Ag agents that survive the purge will be covering multiple counties and that will likely mean more time traveling and communicating with farmers via email rather than face to face. He said that’s difficult in an age where many farmers still don’t have computers.

Walker is flip-flopping again, in the hopes the following bride, and much-needed help, makes farmers forget:

Walker Proposes $50M In Rural Economic Development: The initiative would include low-interest loans for dairy businesses, more money for state marketing efforts, and a new college scholarship program for students to take agriculture classes at state colleges. Walker announced creation of a $200,000 scholarship fund to encourage students to take agriculture courses at a state technical college or the University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture.

Hard Core Rural Conservative voters will Pay more for Health Insurance: I found this health care research unsettling, because it may also apply to other rural government services:

Samuel Trachtman, U of California, Berkeley Abstract: Political scientists have only recently begun paying attention to the ways that individuals’ politics affect their participation in government programs. In particular, it has been shown that Republicans are less likely to enroll in Affordable Care Act marketplace insurance than Democrats ... these decisions are consequential not only for the coverage of individuals, but also for the cost of plans. Due to adverse selection, partisanship-motivated enrollment decisions result in the average Republican enrollee being less healthy than the average Democratic enrollee. I provide empirical evidence demonstrating that insurers have responded to these differences in enrollee composition by increasing prices at a faster rate in areas with more Republican voters. These findings have implications for the design of public policies in an environment where politics can influence uptake decisions.

Just a note:

"I linked this mechanism to political geography, arguing that as insurers receive claims data prices should rise more quickly in areas with more Republicans. To support the hypothesized causal mechanism, I demonstrated a link 29 between county-level Republican vote share and composition of the marketplaces by income, a strong proxy for health status. I then provided evidence of a robust relationship between Republican 2012 vote share and premium growth. The main analysis was corroborated using alternative data, and off-marketplace premium growth was used as a placebo check to support causal identification."

Trump and the Art of the Deal!

Dumb Ron Johnson shreds career bellowing Right Wing Media Conspiracy Theories!!!

Dumb Ron Johnson started showing signs of early dementia late last week when he devoted an entire investigation...and report over the following mind-numbing theory:

The fantasy was that Medicaid expansion is to blame for the opioid crisis in the United States. The ringmaster was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Johnson has been flogging this notion for the better part of a year, or longer, despite the utter lack of evidence that it’s true — and plenty of evidence that the opposite is true.

So wouldn't countries with universal health care for everyone have an even bigger problem? The fact that prescriptions for opioids are down I guess wasn't important.

Johnson wasn't done yet destroying the credibility of Homeland Security as their chairman.

The Daily Intelligencer's Jonathan Chait wrote this about Johnson's latest con over "secret society's" and "off-site" meetings the Obama deep state operatives were using to bring Trump down:

When they hacked Democratic emails, Russians were counting on a gullible mainstream news media and an unprincipled right-wing echo chamber to transform a bunch of trivial internal communications into a pseudo-scandal by wrenching them from all context. It is ironic that the current Republican effort to dismiss the very real scandal that arose from those hacks is using the exact same method.

"Secret Society" or Frighteningly Gullible Chairman of Homeland Security Ranting Hysterically? Are you kidding?

It's a stunning national transformation. What's happened to my conservative Trumpian friend in Milwaukee is now happening to every Republican; they're all spewing scattershot ramblings of disconnected conspiracy's leading to a "secret society" that meets "off-site" for the purpose of bringing down Trump. Seriously? And the drooling right-wing masses think we're still angry losers, just like they would be if Hillary had won..it's what we call projection.

Dumb Ron Johnson, a National Embarrass: NPR's David Greene wouldn't allow Johnson to wander off into Alex Jones land for a moment, and in doing so, highlighted how crazy right-wing politics has gotten. Here's Greene's interview with Johnson this morning. Jaw-dropping:



Here are Johnson's actual loud mouthed comments:



Out-of-Context Johnson BS: This tweet explains one major piece of Johnson's hyperbolic baloney pulled out of context, that "Secret Society:"

Jonathan Chait pointed out the full context and meaning of the other "misunderstood FBI emails:

1. The first wave of stories revealed that Strzok and Page had criticized Donald Trump and referred to their investigation as an “insurance policy.” It sounded extremely suspicious. In fact, a reporter who reviewed the entire context explained that they were referring to an FBI policy favorable to Trump. Strzok used the insurance metaphor — “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40” — to describe the folly of treating an unlikely event as though it had no chance of happening.

2. Strzok and Page had advance knowledge of a Wall Street Journal story. In fact, as Ryan Reilly and Nick Baumann later explained, the story in question was harmful to Clinton, and elsewhere they expressed concern about unauthorized leaks.

3. Strzok expressed reluctance to join Robert Mueller’s team, because “my gut sense and concern is there’s no big there there.” Johnson told a conservative talk-show host that this “jaw-dropping” comment amounted to a confession that Strzok knew that Trump was innocent and joined Mueller’s investigation to smear him. But maybe Strzok simply had an open mind and thought Mueller’s probe stood a strong chance of clearing Trump. 

With 83 Percent of Voters supporting Net Neutrality, Republican Repeal a betrayal of Representation!

Another fine mess Republicans got us into. Keep in mind, this didn't have to happen.

Our "small government" Republicans have forced every state government to create a patchwork of new laws protecting net neutrality. Hoops and red tape have always saved taxpayers money...?

The Federal Communications Commission repealed the nationwide, Obama-era net neutrality rules in December of last year. At the time of the rollback, the FCC prohibited state and local governments from creating regulations of their own.

Now that's small government? And like Wisconsin Republicans eliminating local control here, our Republican Congress is suddenly a big believer in a one-size-fits-all standard:

But the FCC and net neutrality critics argue creating patchwork regulations across the country would make it difficult for these broadband companies to operate. "If there were individual states that pursued net neutrality regulations — creating a patchwork of regulations across the company — it would be difficult, if not impossible for those companies to conduct business."

Corporate GOP Servitude and Nothing Else: Thanks to Republican meddling and repeal of a regulation the public did not want to be repealed, they created this patchwork of statewide regulation.

Democrats to the rescue again:

Fifty U.S. senators have already voiced their support for a bill to override the FCC’s decision ending net neutrality. One Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, joined all 49 of the Senate’s Democrats to support of the bill (one vote shy). At the state level, a collection of more than 20 Attorneys General from around the country filed a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the ruling.

Montana Governor Bullock's Executive Order Model: This just might get around any possible legal problem:

Bullock’s advisors are confident that this method of regulating government contracts and not the providers directly provides a legal loophole to reinstate the spirit of net neutrality rules. The state government is not doing anything to specifically stop telecommunication companies from throttling traffic. But now, if the providers choose to do so, they are also choosing to give up any government business.

Republicans Smearing and Purging "Deep State" Political Opponents!!!

Let's get rid of the term, "creeping fascism." It's now just fascism, period.

Creeping Authoritarianism - Purging "Deep State" Opposition: The point is, Republicans are drooling over the chance to put in place a one-party authority, despite the fact that the next election could stop them cold. But it does send up a few red flags.

Federal "Deep State" Opposition Purge: Since Trump was elected, Republicans have been racing to finally delegitimize and eliminate their political opposition, what they call the "deep state," along with anyone or any entity that disagrees with them:

President Trump blasted the F.B.I. on Twitter as a biased institution whose “reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!” He is casting the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as unreliable, if not worse, just as he has previously done with C.I.A. agents, federal judges, scientists, Congressional Budget Office analysts and journalists, among others. The president wants to undercut just about anybody who is an independent source of information.

Dumb Ron Johnson's alleges Secret Society: Getting whatever mileage they can using words and phrases out of context to smear critics, Dumb Ron Johnson dumped an Alex Jones like conspiracy theory today. Hey, it's all second-hand stuff, but Johnson claims "...I have heard, from somebody who has talked to our committee..."

One cool thing about The Trump Era is people feel they can just say anything, at any time, with no evidence, even when they have an abundantly clear political motive. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, embarked on a tale of conspiracy and woe, as he recounted how a "secret society" within the FBI and the Justice Department was meeting "off-site"—secretly—as part of a campaign to undermine President Trump.

Wisconsin "Deep State" Opposition Purge: Republicans aren't very original, so it's not surprising to see their Borg-like machine replicate the "deep state" purge at a statewide level. Walker's "legal" lackey AG Brad Schimel started the attack with a factless partisan smear campaign against the old GAB staff, accidentally and illegally releasing information about another confidential investigation. And then it snowballed from there, as planned:

(Schimel) issued a report finding the leak (to The Guardian) was a crime but that he did not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone. GOP leaders of the state Senate approved broadening an investigation into the activities of a state ethics board that they disbanded because they believed it was biased against Republicans ... Rep. Robin Vos said, “The idea that individuals who potentially are on the short list of having committed a crime are now going to be in charge of running ethics and elections seems preposterous to me.”

That led to the Wisconsin purging, a "cleaning up" based on Schimel's smear report:

Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate have voted to fire the state's top ethics and elections administrators because of their connections to the now-defunct Government Accountability Board and its investigation of Gov. Scott Walker. "I think we have to," said Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. "I'll never have any confidence in either one of those agencies until that's cleaned up."

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald Says Republicans Will Explore Ways To Fire Other Former Employees Of GAB. "I wish they'd all resign," said Fitzgerald.

Who else will be included GOP enemies list, besides Wisconsin protesters, DNR scientists, UW faculty, election officials, anyone from Madison and Dane County, liberals, local governments, and teachers?

Walker's opposition to High Speed Rail Kills Minnesota's dream for speed between Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul!!!

Unlike all the other states in the Midwest, Wisconsin is now more painfully backward than any of us ever imagined. 

GOP legislators halt Minnesota-Wisconsin high-speed rail study...Critics say exploring route from Twin Cities to Milwaukee is pointless. 

In December Republicans Rep. Paul Torkelson and Sen. Scott Newman objected to the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) accepting federal grant money to complete the study — largely because Wisconsin opposes high-speed rail ... work on the study has stopped after just over $1 million in state and federal money had already been spent on it. 

Since 2010, high-speed rail has been a hot-button political issue in Wisconsin. GOP Gov. Scott Walker declined $810 million in federal stimulus money for a Madison-to-Milwaukee line, saying it would be too expensive to build and maintain. Walker’s opposition to the service remains unchanged, according to Torkelson. “It would be rather inappropriate for us to spend federal funds when there’s no chance of it going forward,” he said. (Walker’s office did not return phone calls.)

Generally speaking, high-speed trains are capable of sustained speeds of 150 mph or more — which is the case in Europe and Asia. Some trains in China, which has bet big on the high-speed rail, whisk along at 220 mph.

The United States has no true high-speed rail service. A report by the Midwest High Speed Rail Association attributes this to a lack of funding, the difficulty of getting state, local and municipal governments to agree on a plan, and outdated safety regulations and infrastructure. The majority of Amtrak trains share track with freight. And there’s Americans’ storied love of their automobiles.

Stopping the Minnesota high-speed project is shortsighted because it prevents what he called “a basic assessment” to understand what’s needed.

Dumb Ron Johnson's Homeland Security Opioid Fiasco Fantasy.

There's a reason why I call him, Dumb Ron Johnson. This is just another example.

click here

The fantasy was that Medicaid expansion is to blame for the opioid crisis in the United States. The ringmaster was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Johnson has been flogging this notion for the better part of a year, or longer, despite the utter lack of evidence that it’s true — and plenty of evidence that the opposite is true.

Just imagine if the U.S., or for that matter any other country in the world, had universal health care. The horror, where everyone is on opioids!!! Oh, other countries have universal care and they don't have the same problem as the U.S? That's our Dumb Ron Johnson.

From NPR, I caught this audio clip of Johnson's embarrassing freak out:



Johnson even put out a Homeland Security report listing coincidences and pure mumbo-jumbo all on official paper shown above with link.

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times had a field day with Johnson's lunacy, with graphs and facts. Maybe Hiltzik should be in charge of Homeland Security:

The witnesses included one anti-Medicaid ideologue, two local prosecutors who testified that they’ve seen a lot of addicts in their work and lots of them seem to be on Medicaid, and two experts who, tactlessly, pointed out that the causes of the opioid epidemic are many and complex, that it started years before Medicaid expansion, and that it involves patients and doctors in Medicare and private insurance as well as the uninsured. As Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University told Johnson’s committee, this was the product in part of the drug industry’s “brilliant, multifaceted marketing campaign that changed the culture of opioid prescribing.”

The Republican campaign against Medicaid could only make the opioid crisis worse. That’s because Medicaid pays for a huge proportion of opioid treatments, covering fully one-third of those with addiction problems.

Here are the charts...

A chart reproduced from a report he released Wednesday pinning the crisis on Medicaid fraud paired five Medicaid expansion states with neighboring non-expansion states, purporting to show much higher increases in opioid deaths in the expansion states from 2013 to 2015. Johnson didn’t seem to notice that the 55% increase in Maine, one of his non-expansion states, actually exceeded the increase in three of his expansion states — Ohio (41%), Maryland (44%) and West Virginia (27%).

Trump Party Predictions pt 2...

Screnock mansplains Dallet's supposed lack qualifications as next Justice.

Screnock! No, it's not the name of a troll warrior from Lord of the Rings. It's the name of a cranky conservative judge who clearly knows more about the "rule of law" than anyone else, and thinks women don't have the ability to serve the people like a man.

The law is conservative Judge Michael Screnock says; it's not liberal, it's not neutral or...whatever, and Screnock will rewrite it if it's not conservative enough yet.That's guaranteed.

It drives me crazy: But really, conservative judges interpreting laws in a conservative way are...politically conservative. Originalists are conservatives who say the law is conservative. Yet, a neutral judge who defies the conservative line, is a liberal and unqualified. 

It's time to take back this conservative garbage, as justice candidate Judge Rebecca Dallet does here. Warning: Screnock thinks this is a "shocking" comment from a woman: 

State Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet laid into opponent Sauk County Circuit Judge Michael Screnock this week for using “all this rhetoric about rule of law garbage.”  

"He’s talking about all this rhetoric about rule of law garbage that is basically — it’s rule of law until it’s something you want changed and then you just go ahead and change it. When the Legislature gets it wrong and they violate someone’s rights, it’s my job to say no. I am not a rubber stamp of whatever the Legislature does or whatever the governor does."

Screnock mansplains women should settle down, know their place, know their limits, and don't use "such language." Of course, Scronock had his condescending spokesMAN backhand Dallet instead:

Screnock spokesman Sean Lansing expressed alarm over her comments. "It is shocking to hear a sitting judge, let alone a candidate for our state's highest court, use this language, and it seriously calls into question her ability to serve the people of Wisconsin as an impartial arbiter of the law."

Scott Walker's Act 10 wrecking ball lowers Teacher Standards, doubles lower quality "Emergency Licenses!!!"

We're now lowering the bar for teacher hiring in Wisconsin, thanks to Scott Walker's biggest bragging point, Act 10. It's also time for Democrats to drive this point home, now that Republicans are attempting to solve a major problem they created with Act 10 by dramatically lowering the bar for teacher hiring statewide. 

From a previous blog post, this event was a pelude to the growing teacher shortage:

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Now anyone can teach our kids, says one rural republican politician. Underfunded rural schools, struggling desperately to keep their teachers from leaving, just got the conservative kind of help they voted for. jsonline:

A rural schools leader said that's not what rural schools asked for. "Heavens no," said Jerry Fiene, executive director of the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance. "This totally destroys any licensure requirements that we have in Wisconsin. It's very concerning."

New Low in Stupidity: May I introduce you to Rep. Mary Czaja (R-Irma). But she's not alone...her fellow dullards in the assembly love the idea:

Problem solver or dimwit?

She said pursued the (following) measure...

Anyone with a bachelor's degree could be hired and licensed to teach sixth- through 12th-grade English, math, social studies or science in Wisconsin And any person with relevant experience — even a high school dropout — could be licensed to teach in any other non-core academic subject in those grades. 

Czaja agreed it might make it easier to become a teacher in Wisconsin than in any other state. Czaja couldn't name any districts that had asked for the broader flexibilities.

"The districts are going to be the ones that hire these people, and I firmly believe that they're not going to throw somebody in there that isn't doing a good job. This is just flexibilities. They don't have to use it." 

Scott Walker's Act 10 "Emergency Licenses:" Doesn't sound right...right? Sure we've got a budget surplus, but it didn't have to come at the expense of teachers or public education. These dumbed down emergency licenses are on the increase too, with no sign of slowing down:

Alan Shoho, the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said the school's enrollment is down from historical numbers. He tells us jobs that once had 120 candidates before Act 10 now fall closer to 20. "We can talk about compensation, we can talk about working conditions, but I boil it down to this one word and its respect.". He feels the lack of respect has caused detrimental changes in teacher education.

 So now we've created emergency licenses. Here's TMJ4 with the bad news:



Walker to the Rescue, Again, Fixing a Problem He Created? Here's what's worse; not only does Walker have to fix a problem he created, but like everything else, he's lowered the bar with a half-assed band-aid that's just as destructive. From WKOW a look at the teacher problem and the solution - make it easier to become a teacher?:

-Some teachers get a taste of today's workplace and leave education entirely … pressures and politics of the job have heightened in recent years … it's common to hear teachers say they feel disrespected by the public, unsupported by their administration and beaten up by parents.

-Act 10 has created an open market for teachers, which makes it harder for districts to retain staff with sought-after skills. "Everyone is talking about resignation rates, they're higher everywhere in the past several years," Johnna Noll, director of instructional services at the West Allis-West Milwaukee Public Schools said.

Walker: "Improving the Quality of the Classrooms is Priceless...:" Walker's worse than anticipated solution to hiring unqualified teachers is "improving quality?" That's what's he going to say in the state of the state address:

Walker also previewed a message he'll deliver on Wednesday, touting historic spending on K-12 education in his latest budget and the impact of his controversial 2011 Act 10 law that hobbled the ability of public teacher's unions to negotiate benefits, working conditions and wages.

"Making a historic investment in K-12 education is great, but knowing with certainty those dollars will be invested in improving the quality of the classroom is priceless," Walker said.